L'avenir de la surprise tactique à l'heure de la numérisation
Surprise is a crucial dimension of military tactics, which stems from incertitude inherent to war.
Over the last decades, the continuous progress of information technologies has promoted the idea of a “transparent battlefield”. This may lead to question the relevance of the concept of tactical surprise in the digital era. As a matter of fact, far from putting an end to surprise, technological breakthroughs offer new opportunities to create surprise as well as new risks of being surprised. In this renewed tactical context, the French Army will inaugurate in 2018 a comprehensive modernization program named Scorpion, which calls for a reshaping of the command and control structure in order to put surprise at the core of the modes of action, so as to make the most of the technological potential while staying away from overreliance.
This content is available in French: L'avenir de la surprise tactique à l'heure de la numérisation
Security Studies Center
Heir to a tradition dating back to the founding of Ifri, the Security Studies Center provides public and private decision-makers as well as the general public with the keys to understanding power relations and contemporary modes of conflict as well as those to come. Through its positioning at the juncture of politics and operations, the credibility of its civil-military team and the wide distribution of its publications in French and English, the Center for Security Studies constitutes in the French landscape of think tanks a unique center of research and influence on the national and international defense debate.
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